Ian on November 17th, 2009

Today Fair Trade Coffee Review is looking at Shock Coffee’s fair trade organic blend coffee.
If you are dragging your butt out of bed and need a real kick start, try some Shock fair trade organic blend! This blend contains almost double the caffeine as a regular cup of coffee. They also carry an Energy blend [...]

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Ian on October 2nd, 2009

Day 2 of Fair Trade month offers a wonderful story about Luis Adauto de Oliveira, a fair trade coffee farmer from Brazil.
“Fair Trade has given us the ability to grow coffee the way it should be grown – sustainably, organically and with great concern for quality.  Our families are fed, our children are in school, [...]

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Ian on September 29th, 2009

For those of you looking for a real life account of how the fair trade coffee process works and affects people, here is a brief story about fair trade in action.
In the coffee growing mountains of Columbia, there is a co-op of 270 farming families called APCO (Asociación Pequeños Caficultores de Ocamonte) that was formed [...]

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Ian on September 28th, 2009

Organic coffee is coffee grown primarily without the use of pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertilizers. Packages will display one of several logos depending on where they are packaged. To the left are the logos for Canada and the U.S.
Fair trade coffee producers are required to farm with sustainable farming techniques. The rules are intended [...]

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Ian on September 23rd, 2009

How many cups of coffee do you get from a pound of fair trade coffee beans?
Well, having a Bachelor of Mathematics, I couldn’t resist weighing in with some calculations of my own (apologies to any one out there who happened to do the same math that I’m going to do, its either purely coincidence or [...]

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Ian on September 23rd, 2009

Below is a chart comparing some of the major differences between Fair Trade Certification and Rainforest Alliance Certification. The basic primary difference is Fair Trade is based more on the economics of the farmer whereas Rainforest Alliance is based primarily on the sustainability. However, even given that I just said that, the Fair Trade certified producers [...]

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Ian on September 22nd, 2009

This is a brief description of what fair trade and fair trade certification are.
Fair Trade Certification empowers farmers and farm workers to lift themselves out of poverty by investing in their farms and communities, protecting the environment, and developing the business skills necessary to compete in the global marketplace. Fair Trade is much more than a fair price though!

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Ian on September 22nd, 2009

I’m not one for long boring history lessons, sorry to say, history was always one of my weakest subjects, but the following is a brief history of fair trade coffee.
In the first half of the 1900’s there were many small movements and discussions about providing fair wages and working conditions for workers in some of [...]

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Ian on September 20th, 2009

My wife was strolling through Costco many months ago (not sure it may even be a year or so ago) and as she always does, stops at each sampling presentation. This one time, William Spartivento had a booth set up and she tried a sample of their organic fair trade espresso (they do offer several [...]

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